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January 7, 367: Early church father Athanasius, famous for his battles against the Arian heresy, writes a letter containing a list of what he thinks should be considered the canon of Scripture. Over time, his list would be accepted by the church (see issue 43: How We Got Our Bible and issue 28: 100 Most Important Events in Christian History).

January 7, 1536: Catherine of Aragon, whose divorce from Henry VIII was the catalyst for the English Reformation, dies (see issue 48: Thomas Cranmer).

January 7, 1844: Bernadette Soubirous, whose visions of Mary led to the establishment of the Shrine of Lourdes, is born.

January 8, 1438: In an attempt to forge an alliance that would save Constantinople from the Turks, the Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches meet at the Council of Ferrara-Florence. A temporary union was reached, but Constantinople fell anyway in 1453, ending the Byzantine Empire.

January 8, 1438: Mathematician, physicist, astronomer, and devout Roman Catholic Galileo Galilei dies in Arcetri, Italy, under house arrest by the Inquisition (see issue 76: Christian Face of the Scientific Revolution).

January 8, 1956: Missionaries Jim Elliot, Nate Saint, Roger Youderian, Ed McCully, and Pete Fleming are killed by Ecuadorean Indians they sought to evangelize. The story of the missionaries and their deaths along the Curaray River was publicized by Elliot's widow, Elizabeth, in Through Gates of Splendor, published the following year.

January 9, 1569: Philip of Moscow, primate of the Russian Orthodox Church, is murdered by Czar Ivan IV, also called Ivan the Terrible (see issue 18: Russian Christianity).

January 10, 236: Fabian is elected pope. He served until 250, when he became the first martyr under Decius, the emperor who initiated Empire wide persecution of Christians. After Fabian's death, Decius is reported to have said, "I would far rather receive news of a rival to the throne than of another bishop of Rome" (see issue 27: Persecution in the Early Church).

January 10, 1645: The controversial archbishop of Canterbury and leader of the Church of England, William Laud, is beheaded. An enemy and persecutor of the Puritans and a staunch defender of the "divine right of kings", he found himself on the wrong side of history when the Puritan revolution began in the 1640s.

January 10, 1739: George Whitefield, the preacher who sparked America's first Great Awakening, is ordained to the Anglican ministry. Whitefield took to open-air preaching after jealous ministers denied him the use of their pulpits, and he was perfectly suited to it—his booming voice, it was reported, could be heard a mile away (see issue 38: George Whitefield).

January 11, 1759: The first American life insurance company is incorporated in Philadelphia—the "Corporation of Poor and Distressed Presbyterian Ministers and of the Poor and Distressed Widows and Children of Presbyterian Ministers."

January 11, 1875: The "Scandal of the Century" goes public as journalist Theodore Tilton sues prominent liberal pastor Henry Ward Beecher for alienating his wife's affections (i.e. having an affair with her). The trial, which became a national sensation, finally ended with a hung jury.

January 12, 1167: Aelred, the Anglo-Saxon abbot who became one of the Middle Ages' best-known devotional writers, dies.

January 12, 1588: John Winthrop, a lawyer who became the first governor of the Puritans in Massachusetts, is born in Suffolk, England (see issue 41: American Puritans).

January 13, 367 (traditional date): Hilary of Poitiers, the leading orthodox church father during Arianism's heyday, dies. His writings about the Trinity and his organization of anti-Arian allies were influential in fighting the heresy but did not have their full effect until after his death (see issue 51: Heresy in the Early Church).

January 13, 1501: Christianity's first vernacular hymnal is printed in Prague, containing 89 hymns in Czech.

January 13, 1616: Flemish mystic Antoinette Bourignon is born. A mystical writer whose works were included by John Wesley in his Christian Library, she soon found herself estranged from mainstream Christianity, especially when she declared herself the "woman clothed with the sun" of Revelation 12. Still, her ideas were so influential that, for 178 years, ministers of the Church of Scotland had to make an explicit denial of Bouringnonism before they could be ordained.

January 13, 1635: Philip Jacob Spener, founder of German pietism, is born in Rappolstein. His emphasis on new birth and holy living revitalized the German Lutheran Church and many later movements, including American evangelicalism (see issue 10: Pietism).

January 13, 1691: George Fox, founder of the Society of Friends (Quakers), dies. Fox left the Anglican church to rely on the "Inner Light of the Living Christ."

January 13, 367 (traditional date): Hilary of Poitiers, the leading orthodox church father during Arianism's heyday, dies. His writings about the Trinity and his organization of anti-Arian allies were influential in fighting the heresy but did not have their full effect until after his death (see issue 51: Heresy in the Early Church).

January 13, 1501: Christianity's first vernacular hymnal is printed in Prague, containing 89 hymns in Czech.

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